Chad’s chronic instability persisted throughout 2009. The governments of The Sudan and Chad again agreed not to provide support to each other’s rebel movements, but this had little effect. One of the rebel movements in the war-torn Sudanese region of Darfur continued to launch operations from Chad and was thought to receive much of its funding from Pres. Idriss Déby; meanwhile, Chadian rebels continued to operate from Darfur. Government forces in Chad were able to rebuff a rebel attack in May, and by mid-2009, despite a steep decline in fighting in Darfur that led some observers to declare that the region should no longer be considered a war zone, some 250,000 refugees from the region remained in eastern Chad, where a small UN peacekeeping operation was stationed.

Déby’s highly authoritarian government refused to enter into dialogue with the president’s internal opponents. On the Economist Intelligence Unit’s democracy index, published in late 2008, Chad was ranked 166th out of 167 countries. Chad’s oil revenues did not bring the social and economic benefits promised by the government to local communities, but instead the revenues were used to build up the military and to facilitate corruption. Chad’s main allies—France, Libya, the U.S., and China—did little to challenge the country’s abuse of human rights, though U.S. Pres. Barack Obama’s special envoy to The Sudan, retired air force general J. Scott Gration, did meet with Chadian officials. There was speculation that French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy might abandon France’s military bases in Chad, but the bases remained, and the U.S. continued to train Chadian soldiers, allegedly to fight al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists.

Learn More in these related articles:

...in a series of peace agreements with rebel groups, continued insecurity in 2009 in the northern region of the Central African Republic (CAR) forced another 10,000 CAR refugees to flee into southern Chad, where they joined an estimated 60,000 of their countrymen. In February government troops were accused of having carried out violent reprisals in the Ndele region against civilians who were...